Development of the social brain during adolescence

By Iroise Dumontheil. 2015

94 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This article describes recent research which informs our understanding of changes in social cognition during adolescence. The focus will be on mentalising, the ability to attribute and manipulate mental states in the self and others. Mentalising is supported by the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and both anterior and posterior regions of the temporal lobes. In the past decade, studies have demonstrated development during adolescence of white and grey matter brain structure, with most protracted changes observed in frontal and temporal lobes, including those regions supporting mentalising. This article presents evidence that certain aspects of social cognition continue to change during adolescence, highlighting results from recent research investigating the use of theory of mind information in a communicative context. The findings highlight how adolescence, and not only childhood, is a time of continued maturation of brain and behaviour, when education and the environment can have an impact on cognitive development.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b42253e3dd45099935ba7c40ecf41c40a8659844

Citations in the corpus

• Cognitive emotion regulation: a review of theory and scientific findings (2016, unknown): “This framework for understanding emotion regulation is especially relevant to educators, because the ability to use cognition to diminish negative emotion provides one opportunity to restore balance between the early-developing limbic system, which includes the amygdala, and the later-developing pre”